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Christmas day is in three weeks. Ho ho ho and all of that? Just kidding! We love Christmas and we’ve got our tree up in the office (& at home) already.

Here’s our favourite things this week from that big thing we call the web:

Adam

CSS Menu Effects Inspiration

Photo: Little Snippets / littlesnippets.net

Everybody loves a well-designed nav menu. Stick some fancy CSS effects on it and you’re away. Not really. I’m hoping some more thought goes into your UX than that! Anyway, if you are going down the route of CSS effects, Little Snippets have provided some inspiration (& code) to get you going.

Twitter Stupidly Removes Share Counts

Photo: Pixabay / pixabay.com

We use share counts a lot, as I’m sure you do too. So Twitter’s decision to remove them seems illogical and has left a sour taste in many people's mouths. Here’s 3 reasons why their decision was and is a bad one.

Stock Photos That Don’t Look Like Stock Photos

Photo: StockSnap / stocksnap.io

Totally taking the chance to flog one of my favourite blogs (ours) and give you some handy resources that I use on a daily basis. The majority of these stock photo sites feature completely free images for commercial use under CC0. Some of my favourites are Pixabay, Stocksnap and Unsplash.

Ruth

Takana - Live SCSS browser updates

Photo: Takana / usetakana.com

For anyone doing front-end development, this is brilliant. Takana lets you see your SCSS and CSS style changes live, in the browser, as you type them! - Just simply install the CLI, run the project and and the small javascript file - and wallah! You’re done!

Learn flexbox with frogs

Photo: Flexbox Froggy / flexboxfroggy.com

We had fun in the studio playing leapfrog with flexboxfroggy to understand the new styles we could utilise in further projects. It’s a great way to challenge yourself to learn something new! Flexbox is becoming more and more popular, and the power it holds is incredible.

Lewis

PHP 7

Photo: Zend / zend.com

Having been in development for well over 2 years, PHP-7 has now been released and you won’t be upset with the dramatic changes and speed improvements. With the introduction of the Perl renowned spaceship to an overhaul of the exception and error handling. We’ll cover in detail all the new features shortly, but in the meantime, go and upgrade!

PHP7-CC

Photo: Pixabay / pixabay.com

It’s only fitting that I mention a tool that won’t let you down. php7cc is a command line tool designed to make migration from PHP 5.3 - 5.6 to PHP 7 much easier. It’ll scan your codebase and search for any potential troublesome statements. Sadly, it doesn’t fix them for you… but it does give you the heads up.

HTTP/2

Photo: IconUtopia / iconutopia.com

As sad as it is, the days of SPDY are drawing to an end with browsers officially removing support as of early 2016. But with that sad news comes the great announcement of full HTTP/2 support across most browsers (sorry, Android!).

HTTP/2 is based on Google’s experimental SPDY protocol and is all about delivering page load improvements, multiplexing and concurrency support. With the huge rise in mobile users, it’s never been more important to have a faster loading website on mobile devices. One of our most favourite features of both SPDY and HTTP/2 is server push. Just let the server send you resources even when the client hasn’t requested them. We’re paying close attention to Nginx for their official announcement that they will support this

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About the Author

With a passion for all things creative, Adam has been designing for over 5 years, meaning he knows Photoshop and Illustrator inside-out. From web design, to pixel art, to painting and logo design, he’s probably had a go at it. He’ll be the one you’ll be speaking to regarding any design related queries. Outside of work, Adam loves fine art, music and all things internet - you’ll always find him on some social network. Oh, and he loves cats!